tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31097815475355981152011-07-28T06:00:12.002-07:00CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.comBlogger241100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-60767867908869312862008-12-12T16:02:00.000-08:002008-12-12T16:25:17.181-08:00

Let the record show my top 10 albums of 2008:1. Bon Iver- For Emma, Forever Ago...2. The Loved Ones- Build & Burn3. Kaki King- Dreaming of Revenge4. of Montreal- Skeletal Lamping5. Right Away, Great Captain!- The Eventually Home6. Gym Class Heroes- The Quilt7. Coldplay- Viva La Vida8. The Hold Steady- Stay Positive9. TV On The Radio- Dear Science...10. Santogold- SantogoldLooking back on a year

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com38tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-73212736500062262202008-12-10T15:31:00.000-08:002008-12-10T15:58:18.628-08:00

Lupe Fiasco, "Hustlers and Customers"The holiday season brings us a new track from Lupe, and you know, of course I love it--this guy could cover Crank It and I would probably love it. Here he combines a few measures from some piece of classical music (I can't name what it is, but I'm 95% certain I did ballet to this piece when I was a kid) with a classic, simple beat, resulting in a queer kind

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-39795573306351994522008-12-09T08:11:00.001-08:002008-12-09T08:19:05.552-08:00

The crust of day-old snow gives way under the sole of my boot, crunching and crinkling like red leaves in autumn. I'm walking from my car (parked almost the whole block away, there's never any fucking parking available on this street, your neighbors must throw parties all the damn time) to your house, and I'm reciting under my breath the words I will say to try and get you back. They will work.

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-60308458914570833102008-12-08T18:47:00.000-08:002008-12-08T19:41:34.209-08:00

Two:Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit are The Very BestThis album/mixtape/whathaveyou is awesome! I freely admit that I lack the vocabulary to say much more than "it's awesome," so there you go. Mwamyaya is Malawian (I don't know if this is actually a word; whatever, he's from Malawi), and he and Radioclit mix traditional Africana with electro, soul & R&B, indie and Michael Jackson. On the album

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-83434884060530280292008-12-06T15:11:00.001-08:002008-12-06T15:13:01.391-08:00

Today I got around to listening to 808s and Heartbreak. And you know what it reminds me of? The Mountain Goats' Get Lonely. No, really. They're both essentially concept albums about being dumped, they're both intensely personal, and on these albums both John Darnielle and Kanye dwelled (dwelt?) so much on trying to make the listener feel their sense of loss that they produced albums that were

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-38884527935281748582008-10-20T20:33:00.000-07:002008-10-23T14:15:04.286-07:00

As previously mentioned, I am a slavish devotee of The Mountain Goats. To borrow from recent presidential debate speech, there's a fundamental difference between fans of TMG and non-fans (or even casual fans): the unaffected listeners hear a man with a funny voice, spazzy guitar and wordy, kind of pretentious lyrics, and the fans hear a quirky genius storyteller whose poetry and seeming

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-78015500357109054202008-10-18T13:36:00.000-07:002008-10-18T13:50:17.521-07:00

Tonight I will see The Mountain Goats perform at In The Venue. I bought my ticket in August and today's date, the concert, seems like sort of a mark of how unsettlingly fast the time between then and now has gone. Whenever time passes quickly before an event I've been looking forward to, I always feel slightly alarmed at the thought that the event itself will be gone just as fast. There's

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-17347265443596972782008-10-14T15:21:00.000-07:002008-10-23T14:16:53.327-07:00

This is the fence outside my apartment complex, facing one of the busiest streets in the city. What's beyond the frame is more than twenty more Obama signs on this fence as 500 South curves into 400--I have no idea who put them up. In the past few months, Salt Lake has been smothered by Obama signs everywhere you look, and all I've seen of the other camp is one McCain-Palin bumper sticker.And

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-59545704148379413712008-10-13T17:17:00.000-07:002008-10-23T14:18:49.906-07:00

Of Montreal's last album, 'Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?' mastered one of my absolute favorite musical tricks: combining grim lyrics and sad sentiments with upbeat, cheerful melodies. They plumbed the depths of misanthropy and nihilism and set it to beats you couldn't help but dance to. Listening to it was like an excellently-written novel featuring a protagonist you were meant to

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-47307524800937960632008-07-01T15:14:00.000-07:002008-10-23T14:30:44.309-07:00

It's been roughly a year since I moved from Portland, OR back to SLC, and today I renewed my lease on this apartment for another year. Somehow, I'm still surprised that there's nowhere else I would rather be. I love this valley, I love its culture, I love that there are so many cultures here, I love the diversity I've found here. I love that it's both the least and most mormon city in the

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-91494467824018260672008-06-26T10:02:00.001-07:002008-06-26T10:23:14.807-07:00

Smoking Popes, Stay DownStay Down is warm, familiar and just the kind of uncomplicated rock that I've been craving lately. There's nothing new or groundbreaking here, just punk-ish electric guitar arrangements, verse-chorus-verse and songs from boys about girls. But this band, now reunited after almost a ten-year break, have been around the block and they've made a well-crafted and catchy album

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-46999556918565878012008-06-24T08:52:00.000-07:002008-06-24T09:16:28.138-07:00

I take back any bad word I have ever said about downtown SLC. I don't know how I managed to avoid hearing about this until now, but this year's Twilight Concert Series looks almost too stellar to be true. Like, seriously, I get to see (for starters) The Roots, De La Soul, and The Cool Kids? Downtown, five minutes from my apartment? For free? Where does my city get off being so awesome? I

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-55860154369010698102008-06-23T21:11:00.000-07:002008-10-23T16:49:36.902-07:00

Because of my job, I've been listening to my iPod at least eight hours a day, five days a week, and my need for a constant flow of new music is growing exponentially. Unfortunately, even with a ton of new stuff to listen to I still find myself with musical ADD, skipping around and eventually giving up and choosing to shuffle my whole library. I've been trying to make myself focus more and

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-81373804336977942012008-06-16T12:26:00.000-07:002008-10-23T16:50:57.718-07:00

Better late than never, right? I’m trying to be more diligent in terms of at least writing something about each show I see, because I don’t want to look up at the end of 2008 and realize that I’ve seen dozens of shows and only written about a few of them. And with this tour, especially: I flew to Chicago to see it twice at the United Center and then saw it a third time in SLC at the E-Center,

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-79370792226797647882008-06-14T23:44:00.000-07:002008-10-23T16:53:55.016-07:00

Coldplay is one of those bands that, while I've never thought of them as being a band I'm particularly attached to, have produced some of my absolute favorite songs. Much of their material thus far has been boring, soft, and interchangeable, but the songs that they've gotten right (A Rush Of Blood to The Head, Clocks, The Scientist) are ones that I put on repeat for hours, songs that I feel have

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-5369183225566104872008-06-03T20:26:00.000-07:002008-06-03T20:57:44.566-07:00

Wow, what's up, June? Once again, my grasp of the concept of time and how it passes is tenuous at best. I keep telling myself that I will definitely write up a post about seeing The Used, and then I'll definitely write something about Mac Lethal, and then most definitely Atmosphere, and then I look up and said show was two days ago and I'm seeing someone else already and the images of whomever

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-1616325263528215492008-04-19T11:48:00.000-07:002008-04-19T13:05:42.371-07:00

I saw My Chemical Romance at The Warfield in San Francisco, at Bamboozle Left in Irvine, and at Saltair in Salt Lake City. There are many bands and artists that I love enough to travel out of state for, but somehow when I'm doing the traveling for MCR I have to fight not to feel embarrassed. Because this band gets a lot of flack from my peers, mostly because they play songs that people really

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-55437211507510407732008-04-02T19:03:00.000-07:002008-04-02T19:19:34.192-07:00

I lose track of whether or not it’s cool to like Vampire Weekend these days—hipsters are fickle creatures, and the backlash is firmly in motion. Opinions on the band are divided, and I’ve personally mostly been in the middle. I wasn’t crazy about their album upon first listen, but I must admit it’s grown on me. All arguments about hype and cultural appropriation aside, they make well-constructed

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-53641389424500252702008-03-30T11:07:00.000-07:002008-04-02T19:17:36.607-07:00

I am definitely feeling my twentysomething-what-should-I-do-with-my-life-why-is-the-sky-blue? apathy and existential angst today. I had an opportunity to buy some excellent, colorful shoes yesterday and didn't thanks to a bout of conflict with consumerism culture, and now I wish I had those shoes instead of the moral high ground; it's sleeting outside and man, Utah, if I wanted precipitation I

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-87520647117422789912008-03-29T16:13:00.000-07:002008-03-30T09:33:40.075-07:00

Another of the albums I bought last week at Graywhale. Perhaps I will finally process them all by the time I'm 60.Against Me!, Searching For A Former ClarityI've been vaguely curious about this band for a while, but I admit, when I bought the album it was because it was cheap and used and I just sort of felt like it. I was not at all expecting to fall in love the way I have, to obsess over

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-45361868089748713802008-03-29T10:17:00.000-07:002008-03-29T16:06:00.589-07:00

The Loved Ones played with Cobra Skulls and Flatliners at Kilby Court, which is one of the most entertaining spots in the city for me. It's a garage that could maybe fit two cars in a pinch, tucked at the end of an alleyway with an outside area that holds a fire pit with chairs and benches arranged around it. There's a sign on the ticket booth that says "NO MOSHING! sorry brutal dudes!", and

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-91226231811272472642008-03-25T22:11:00.001-07:002008-03-26T21:27:10.132-07:00

Monday night I went to see Explosions In The Sky play with Lichens at In The Venue, and as usual, the venue's organization left so much to be desired. At the past few shows I've seen there, In The Venue's line management has resembled some kind of absurdist concept art more than a tool to get people into the venue as efficiently as possible. My friend and I waited outside for probably an hour

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-50542424083060610722008-03-23T15:21:00.000-07:002008-03-24T06:30:38.444-07:00

I went on a 45-minute walk today, the longest walk I've taken since breaking my arm. It's the kind of sunny that makes the sky seem huge enough to be something slightly afraid of, but there's still a slight chill in the air.I think that the people who sneer at Salt Lake City and Utah in general--both the ones that live here and the ones that don't--haven't quite realized how much progress has

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3109781547535598115.post-26440620049225678932008-03-20T21:23:00.000-07:002008-03-20T21:47:07.428-07:00

This thing has sat here for a week while I tried to write up an introductory post, so fuck it, whatever, here I am. I don't know what I'll get from this or what I should expect, or what anyone else should expect--it will probably be primarily for posting about music and about where I live, Salt Lake City, and maybe a little bitching about my broken arm. It might just be a dumping ground, it

CMhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06880010857346354170noreply@blogger.com1